The Beginings of Christmas!

The day after Thanksgiving we headed to Charlottesville to spend the day with our good friends the Trimbles, Williams and Muellers! Laura and Aaron very kindly entertained and fed all of us in their lovely home even though Aaron is currently in residency and working nights! It was such a pretty day - we all enjoyed hanging out on UVA's grounds (yes, they are called "grounds", not "campus" - you might call it a rather preppy school ;)). Evie loved running around with Adelynn and Margaret. They were both so sweet to "Baby Evie". I didn't get the greatest pictures, but it's hard with 3 active little girls!

During nap time in the afternoon the guys all played strategy games and us girls made wreaths!! REAL wreaths! Like go-out-into-the-woods-and-pick-real-greenery-and-berries-and-pinecones kind of wreaths! Laura has the perfect yard for gathering greenery. Here we are ready to begin!
I can't believe I didn't get a picture of everyone's final masterpiece, but here is Laura with here's a picture of Laura with hers and a picture of mine on our wall. .
I think this should be a new Thanksgiving tradition, friends... :)

On Saturday we headed out to the forest (aka, Lowe's) to get our Christmas tree! Evie loved helping pick it out. She inspected each option very carefully
We don't want Evie playing with the real tree, but to keep it from being too tantalizing, we decided to get Evie her own little tree that she CAN play with and decorate. She is thrilled. She didn't want to venture far from it all weekend and it was the first thing she'd go to whenever she woke up from a nap or we came home from running errands. Here she is decorating it and then the final product. :) (btw - do you notice that little tiny curl at the back of her head?? It think the curly hair is coming!! :))
I don't have a good picture yet of our real tree, but here we are with Great-Grandma and Grandpa Mortier in front of the beautiful tree at the Dewitt Wallace art museum yesterday. :)
Evie was only mildly interested in the art museum, but it was funny to see what random pieces of art stood out to her. Her favorites were a masthead from a ship poking out from the wall (not pictured) and this funny folk art picture of a little girl and her kitty. She kept running over to it and pointing up at it. :)

Turkey Trotting and Turkey Eating

We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving this year with new traditions and old. I've realized that Thanksgiving and Christmas tend to sneak up pretty quickly when you have a November birthday! I felt a little taken off guard this year, but we had a great long weekend of extended family, friends, and just our family.
Thanksgiving started with what will be our new family tradition - the Blue Talon 5k Turkey Trot bright and early in the morning! Nathan and I were both hoping to do it, but it ended up just being him (I slacked on the training, I admit). Plus, someone needed to be with Evie. :) So Nathan ran the 5k with 2300 (!!) others. He was so fast that I missed all photo opportunities of him, but here's one at the start of the race with everyone pouring into Colonial Williamsburg.
We did get some of Nathan and Evie afterwards. :)
Nathan did an amazing job. The atmosphere around races is always fun and Evie loved the whole event - especially all the dogs to bark at and people to look at. :) we can't wait to all do it next year and make it part of our Thanksgiving tradition.
After the race we headed home to whip up a pie and mashed potatoes to take to Mom and Dad Mortier's house. I didn't get many pictures, but here we are as a family!
Highlights of the day for Evie included looking out Grandma and Grandpa's windows and swinging on their swing. :)

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!!

I can't believe that our little girl is 1! We had so much fun celebrating as a family and with friends this past weekend. On Friday (11.11.11!) we did our family celebration and Evie and I went out to lunch with Grandma, Great-Grandma and Aunt Lisa. Aunt Katie arrived Friday night which was also quite exciting! On Saturday was the party with friends and family.
Here's Evie at the getting ready party. She enjoyed watching all the preparations while she ate and held on to her balloons. :)

She also entertained herself for quite some time with Uncle Aaron's big bear. Here she is showing us how cool it is. :)

We couldn't have done the party without Katie. She was such a huge help!
My friend Karen did all the flowers and helped with the overall decor - we had quite the party during the pre-party! :)

I did a horrible job taking pictures during the party. All these are either taken by Katie or Nathan's dad. Thanks you two!

Cake time! Evie wasn't quite as interested in her cupcake as I'd thought she'd be. She was quite delicate at first. After a few good bites she informed us she was "all done". Oh well, I suppose a love of sweets will come naturally enough and definitely not something I need to push. :)


Evelyn was more into opening the presents than I thought she would be. I think she was just thrilled that I was finally letting her rip paper into tiny pieces and letting her pull all the tissue out of bags. :)
Of course the Fields gave her an OSU hat and cheerleading bear ;)
Thanks to all the family and friends who were able to come! It meant a lot to us to have so many of the people who have played a big role in Evie's life there to celebrate with us!

We tried milk today...

So now that our baby is 1 (on 11.11.11!!!), we decided to try whole milk this morning. (don't worry, birthday party pictures will be coming soon!) I think Evie may take after her parents when it comes to drinking milk. After eyeing her trusty sippy cup VERY suspiciously for a few minutes, she decided to give it a try. It all came spurting back out twice as fast as it even went in! She gave me such a startled, hurt, betrayed look too! We continued on with breakfast and at the end decided to try it again. Again, it went spraying everywhere! She almost burst into tears so we switched to water instead. She was quite happy then. ;) So we'll see how it goes... any tips from parents of children who love milk are welcome. ;)
Since I wasn't fast enough to get pictures of this first milk trying experience, I'll post some from our CW walk this past Sunday. Now that Evie walks so well she prefers walking down the street instead of riding. She is getting faster, but our walks are still significantly slower than pre-walking days. :)
Here we are on our way out the door. You will notice her the red Chic-fil-e balloon. It has been her trusty companion these last few days. :) It goes everywhere with her.
CW...

Pointing to all the dogs:

Playing on the palace green:

She has also figured out recently how to turn her little stool into a chair and climb up on it. You can tell how pleased she is. :)